


Four A.M.

by Ylevihs



Series: How Not to Fall [1]
Category: Fallen Hero Series - Malin Rydén, Fallen Hero: Rebirth (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-11-18 05:40:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18114422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ylevihs/pseuds/Ylevihs
Summary: Richard has a hard time coming to terms with what he did to Herald at the museum.





	Four A.M.

**Author's Note:**

> Just because an apology would be nice doesn't mean it's coming.

A chill ran up Richard’s legs, settling behind his knee caps. His toes were freezing, the wind whipping up from below where his stood, half on the rooftop. Half unsupported. The edge of the building digging into the soles of his bare feet. Daniel’s warmth had leeched slowly from him in the night, an untended fire left to smolder for hours before the embers dulled. Bringing Richard back to empty. Cold.

Icicle sharp and just as brittle.

Richard took a sip of pilfered bourbon and looked down at the street below. Los Diablos never truly went to sleep but the few hours before dawn always brought a lull in activity. Enough of one that Richard wasn’t too concerned about someone looking up and seeing a suicidal man on the ledge.

Well.

A suicidal something, at least.

The burn of the liquor was a poor replacement for Daniel’s hands. Mouth. Words. Lack of words. Leaving Richard feeling full.

Warm and wanted and worthy in the worst ways.

 _I could have killed him._ The thought slipped into the current, a flash of scales from the murky depths. _If I had wanted to._ That night at the museum. If he’d wanted to let the hatred and rage really take over. How hard would it have been to keep pummeling that body? How terribly, terribly easy? Ribs snapped easily enough—and Daniel still walked with a limp, so many months later. With the added strength of the Mad Dog armor, what more effort could it have taken to crack the sternum? Bruise and lacerate internal organs? Take that perfect, pretty (honest and open and trusting and he loves me and means it, that poor) face of his and drive it into the ground till the skull splintered under his palms? Barely any at all. Like cracking an egg shell.

Richard’s feet shifted on the edge, letting his weight rock ever so slightly forward. His stomach heaved against the sight of the ground below him and Richard fought it back, adrenaline pumping impotently through his system.

_He loves me and I could have, would have (would I have? Ever? Really?) killed him._

People were injured that night, Richard knew, but no one had died. None of the rich and stupid, none of the press. Neither Richard nor Mad Dog nor Herald. Daniel. Sleeping, half naked and sated, just below Richard’s perch on the roof. He’d put him in the hospital but he hadn’t killed him. Violence was one thing, murder was.

Hm.

Richard rocked his weight again, letting terror meet the bourbon halfway to his heart. A gust of wind sped up the side of the building, ruffling his hair, chilling the sweat gathering on his forehead. His throat was suddenly dry. The hand that raised the glass to his mouth was trembling. He emptied it and contemplated tossing the glass over the edge, wondering blankly if the sound of it shattering would make it back up to him. If he did hear it would it be enough to drive him over? 

Half of him hoped it would.

Maybe more than half.

No one was there to catch him, after all.

Another updraft of wind managed to send a shiver through his core, the heat of the alcohol leaving too quickly. The tender, bruised-flesh feeling of exposure made him shiver harder. He was covered, enough. So why did he still feel as naked as he had two hours ago? Why could he still feel Daniel’s eyes on his skin? His mouth and tongue and teeth pressed to his scars. Fingertips tracing the barcode, writing something that felt dangerously close to his own name. Writing secret love notes in the spaces between his tattoos. Bile surged up his throat and Richard let it, coughing rough and spitting venom over the edge. That would be a pleasant wake up call, wouldn’t it? Good morning, the guy you confessed your love to last night got drunk and jumped from the roof sometime before dawn.

“Can’t save me from myself, can you flyboy?” Richard whispered. His hold on the empty glass loosened a bit, dangling dangerously between his fingertips. It was halfway out of his grip when the door to the rooftop opened and Richard was forced to freeze. “Ah, beans,”

He didn’t hear footsteps—there weren’t any for him to hear.

“Richard?” his voice was soft as it was in the bedroom but filled with a different sort of trembling concern. The wave of—of.

Oh.

It stabbed Richard clean between his ribs, sharper than the blade of any knife. There was no quiet question. No tentative, gentle ‘what are you doing?’. No move to come any closer. As if proximity could ever matter with Daniel, always too bright and raw and clawing his way through Richard’s veins to tear at his heart.

“Couldn’t sleep either?” Richard tried. Hoping. Maybe that knife digging into his lungs, sending sparks of well-deserved pain zipping through the marrow of his bones, maybe he could cut some of the tension with it. Maybe, if Daniel had the decency to. To. The silence lingered, settling over the two men like fog. Richard turned to look at him and regretted it almost immediately. Dawn was still an hour or two out, but the moon was high. It painted the hero. Well. Like a hero. A half-dressed Prince Charming coming to save a monster in distress.

Daniel landed and for reasons Richard couldn’t bring himself to imagine the name of, a little bit of himself came down too. As though something wound too tightly around his neck had been loosened.

“Do you want help down?”

The words wrapped back around Richard’s throat and pulled taut, drawing an audible squeak out into the open air. He swallowed hard. “N-no, no I,” his knees felt weak but he managed to step back. Step down. Feet solid on the rooftop. Couldn’t very well jump now, not with Herald watching. “I was just thinking,” the lie left something like ashes coating his tongue. Richard tightened his hold on the empty glass as though it were a magic talisman. Something to get him out of the situation. 

“Oh,” fluttering, scared and not quite panicked and not directed at Richard.

“Not about,” the correction came too quickly for his own liking, but it stopped Daniel from flying into whatever storm was gathering at the corners of his mind. A bitter laugh, sharp and surprising them both, made its way up from his chest. “Not about,” he shook his head, unable to get his tongue to form the words. He tried to force himself to anyway, each syllable pulled from him like a joint from a socket. Just as painful. “Last night you were…it was…more. Than it had any right to be,” it’s not what he meant to say. Not even close to what he wanted to say. Daniel took a moment and then a step towards him, a man approaching a wounded animal that might still bite.

“Richard,” his raised his hand, palm up. Come here.

Richard’s legs obeyed even before his mind could register the action. Even quicker than his legs, Daniel was holding him, wrapped around him, tighter than if they were flying. Something frail and fragile inside Richard started to splinter, hairline fractures spider-webbing in a hideously dangerous mosaic. Every breath he took was another inch closer to drowning in the feeling of Daniel. Wanting to protect him. Keep him safe. Loving him. Richard struggled as much as he knew how against it, grip on himself and his anger weakening by the second. “God, you’re freezing, Richie,”

Well that was just.

Just.

Unfair.

Some great joke played by the universe itself on him.

It’s the stupid nickname, the Richie, that does him in.

A jolt of fury at that _(how dare he?)_ swallowed up by Richard clutching at Daniel, glass dropped and forgotten on the rooftop, hands clawing up, clinging so tightly it probably hurt and. Daniel letting him. Returning the hold with mirrored urgency, for all the right—different—reasons. “I’ve got you,” the words whispered against Richard’s temple sit painfully heavy in their plain honesty. There was shuddering; Richard realized with dim horror that a) that was him, he was trembling, ah beans and b) he was crying and didn’t seem able to stop.

The hold on him lessened a fraction, just enough for one of Daniel’s hands to begin stroking gentle circles between his shoulder blades. Sending radiant heat and softness and terrible acid pouring through the new found cracks in Richard’s heart, awful enough to kill. Almost. “I’ve got you,”

**Author's Note:**

> Just something quick and well...quick. Trying to get a feel for writing Richard.


End file.
